The innovation led by the digital transformation of business process in incumbent firms is an essential impetus that promotes high-quality development of the nation. Based on the digital research frontier and organizational inertia theory， it discussed the impact of business process digitization （BPD） in incumbent firms on innovation performance with the samples obtained from the World Bank survey of Chinese enterprises. The conclusions are as follows： BPD in incumbent firms promotes innovation performance significantly； data sharing in incumbent firms positively moderates the relationship between BPD and innovation performance； subordination of group company weakens the relationship between BPD and innovation performance； the proportion of state-owned shares facilitates the relationship between BPD and innovation performance. It reveals that the internal influence of incumbent firms’ BPD and innovation performance and deepens the interaction mechanism between organizational inertia and BPD on innovation performance， and has vital theoretical foresight and realism pertinency value for the digitization of incumbent firms.